May 2011 - Subud Voice

ut it was a kind of initiation. Afterwards I started
a clinic and school. All the children came to
the school. The clinic was fine!
Patricia: Did you have a nurse for the clinic?
Wilbert: Yes. I educated and trained one of the
boys. He was very good. Training was always the
first thing I did in trying to help without
weapons… I carried no weapons. Normally when
I tried to help I used – instead of weapons – my
books and first aid materials, syringes, help for
wounds and such.
We used a medicine that at the time was comparable
to penicillin for this kind of thing. When I
arrived at a new village even before reaching it,
you could smell the wounds already. I would give
an injection to the wounded, and after three days the rotten pus would be gone and a nice layer of skin would have
begun to form.
My boy – he was my nurse - had a house next to my clinic. We worked together and had an average of 125 people
a day at the clinic.
‘Even though
Finding Subud
I was successful,
Patricia: How long did you stay in New Guinea?
’
I came to feel
Wilbert: I arrived in July 1958 and left in 1971. Thirteen years.
that inwardly
Patricia: What was the next stage in your life?
I was so very empty!
Wilbert: I was very successful in the work. The Bishop was very pleased with me. But even though I was
successful, I came to feel that inwardly I was so very empty! So empty! I had not known it. I had not been really
aware of it, then one day I imagined myself 80 years old and felt afraid. What if I had been eighty and doing only
this work all of those years? Then I realised how truly empty I felt!
At that moment I read a booklet by Dietrich Bonhoffer, a Protestant minister who died in a concentration camp in
Germany. There was a memorable sentence in it. ‘Change is grace. Stagnation is sin’. It became clear to me that I
had to change. But how and what?
There was no one to talk to about my loneliness, my emptiness.
Wilbert went as a missionary to Irian Jaya, a remote and
unknown place
The same month the Superior of the Franciscans came from Indonesia. He asked, ‘who will come back with me?’
I was the first one. I said ‘I’m going with you!’ The people and my colleagues said ‘You can’t do that.’ But I was
determined and so I went back with him.
So I came to Jakarta with the Franciscan Superior. We arrived at 11.0clock in Jakarta. It was coffee time! I got my
coffee, and then I saw the national newspaper of Indonesia, distributed by the Franciscans.
I opened it and saw a small article stating that yesterday the President of Indonesia had opened the Subud World
Congress. I immediately felt, ‘that is it. That is why I am here’.
I didn’t talk with my colleagues, I went instead straight to the two houseboys and asked them where Cilandak was,
as Cilandak was mentioned in the newspaper article. They said it was in the south.
I had no rest anymore. I went directly out and asked someone, ‘Where is the south?’ And was told ‘At the end of
this road.’ It was a big road to Bandung.
SUBUD VOICE PAGE 13 MAY 2011